4 ms·

Wow, a man page that is actually readable and understandable... just like any other man page. I've been using Linux for years, and never once have I seriously

Wow, a man page that is actually readable and understandable... just like any other man page. I've been using Linux for years, and never once have I seriously looked at replacements for man pages. In your average man page, I can look up even the most obscure option and know exactly how to use it and what it actually does. With a detailed enough man page, I don't even need to look anywhere else much of the time. It irritates me when I have to lookup documentation which isn't written in a similar format. (Say, LaTeX.) I don't see any appeal in "tldr pages" or "bro pages", and frankly, I get rather annoyed when every once in a while I see HN posts promoting projects like that which basically reinvent the square wheel instead of solving the real problems of man pages (which I'd say there are two: lack of hyperlinks and poor searchability).

cx1000 10y ago
I have never heard of bro pages before. It sounded like a pejorative but it's actually a thing http://bropages.org/ http://bropages.org/. I find them to be a lot of wasted time too and totally agree about the hyperlinks. As far as searching man pages, I do pretty well with the trusty forward slash. Would you prefer more semantic searching like google?
catern 10y ago
>solving the real problems of man pages (which I'd say there are two: lack of hyperlinks and poor searchability texinfo (info) has hyperlinks, and I can search through multiple manuals if that's what you mean by searchability. And it's probably already installed on your system.
- pwdisswordfish 10y ago
  I can never remember which manual page contains a description of struct timespec, for example. Running apropos or man -k didn't help me. I only found out it's time.h(0p) by a lucky guess. Info is actually a quite decent idea, it's just executed poorly. Info pages are written like books, while I really miss the concise lexicon-like format of man pages. And it doesn't help that the default GNU info viewer is on one hand unusable for someone who isn't already an Emacs user, and on the other redundant for Emacs users. (I am the former. Fortunately, there's pinfo.)
  - catern 10y ago
    Ah. Just open the libc manual with "info libc", then "i" to look something up in the index, and type "struct timespec". (You can even tab-complete the name of the struct). >And it doesn't help that the default GNU info viewer is on one hand unusable for someone who isn't already an Emacs user Yes, well, did you consider running "info info"? :) There's a tutorial accessible with "h". It's not as if there's much to learn, the arrow keys and Enter work fine for navigating and following links.
    - glandium 10y ago
      `info info` is useless when you don't know info and don't have emacs installed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12301491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12301491
      - catern 10y ago
        That's incorrect. That's what happens when the info documentation for info has not been installed by your distribution. Normally you get https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-stnd.html https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-s...
JdeBP 10y ago
> lack of hyperlinks and poor searchability Meet Daniel J. Bernstein's slashdoc. * http://cr.yp.to/slashdoc.html http://cr.yp.to/slashdoc.html

cx1000 10y ago

I have never heard of bro pages before. It sounded like a pejorative but it's actually a thing http://bropages.org/ http://bropages.org/. I find them to be a lot of wasted time too and totally agree about the hyperlinks. As far as searching man pages, I do pretty well with the trusty forward slash. Would you prefer more semantic searching like google?

catern 10y ago

>solving the real problems of man pages (which I'd say there are two: lack of hyperlinks and poor searchability texinfo (info) has hyperlinks, and I can search through multiple manuals if that's what you mean by searchability. And it's probably already installed on your system.

pwdisswordfish 10y ago
I can never remember which manual page contains a description of struct timespec, for example. Running apropos or man -k didn't help me. I only found out it's time.h(0p) by a lucky guess. Info is actually a quite decent idea, it's just executed poorly. Info pages are written like books, while I really miss the concise lexicon-like format of man pages. And it doesn't help that the default GNU info viewer is on one hand unusable for someone who isn't already an Emacs user, and on the other redundant for Emacs users. (I am the former. Fortunately, there's pinfo.)
- catern 10y ago
  Ah. Just open the libc manual with "info libc", then "i" to look something up in the index, and type "struct timespec". (You can even tab-complete the name of the struct). >And it doesn't help that the default GNU info viewer is on one hand unusable for someone who isn't already an Emacs user Yes, well, did you consider running "info info"? :) There's a tutorial accessible with "h". It's not as if there's much to learn, the arrow keys and Enter work fine for navigating and following links.
  - glandium 10y ago
    `info info` is useless when you don't know info and don't have emacs installed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12301491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12301491
    - catern 10y ago
      That's incorrect. That's what happens when the info documentation for info has not been installed by your distribution. Normally you get https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-stnd.html https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-s...

JdeBP 10y ago

> lack of hyperlinks and poor searchability Meet Daniel J. Bernstein's slashdoc. * http://cr.yp.to/slashdoc.html http://cr.yp.to/slashdoc.html